Police suspect body of woman found in West Palm linked to dead kids found in canal

DELRAY BEACH — In a grisly twist in an already sordid case, Delray Beach police Friday evening said they suspect a woman whose body was found in a trash bin in West Palm Beach in August is the mother of two children found in bags in a Delray Beach canal on Wednesday.

While the identifies are not confirmed, police spokeswoman Nicole Guerriero said they believe the dead are: Jermaine McNeil, 10, his sister JuTyra Allen, 6, and their mother Felicia Brown, 25.

Guerriero said the only suspect in the murders is Clem Beauchamp, who was arrested Thursday on unrelated federal charges.

The children were living in Beauchamp's Delray Beach home along with Michelle Dent and her three children, officials said.

At a hearing earlier Friday, the Florida Department of Children & Families persuaded a judge to strip Dent of custody of the three children. During the hearing, a DCF investigator told the judge that Dent was "a person of interest" in a double, possibly a triple, homicide.

DCF investigator Michele Fuhrman testified that she believed it was not in the best interest of the children — Demetrius Beauchamp, 15, Keayana Beauchamp, 10, and Karchelle Washington, 3 — to remain with Dent during the ongoing criminal investigation.

Fuhrman told the judge she believes Delray Police are reviewing Walmart security tapes to see if weights may have been purchased there — weights presumably to sink bodies. "It's the beginning of a very intense criminal investigation," Fuhrman said.

Fuhrman told the judge that when child protection team investigators interviewed the older children that they denied any knowledge of the disappearances. But their answers seemed coached due to their similarity and them correcting their answers.

Meanwhile, Delray Beach police responded to a "domestic" call around noon today at Dent's last known address. A woman was seen leaving the back of the house in the 1600 block of Northeast Third Avenue and going into the house next door.

Neighbors had heard some sort of argument involving children at the house and called law enforcement. But police left without taking anyone into custody.

Police began questioning Beauchamp on Thursday night. He was formally charged Thursday in U.S. District Court with possession of a silenced firearm, according to a complaint filed by an agent with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In laying out the federal allegations, which is a separate investigation from the dead children, the ATF agent described finding in the trunk of Brown's repossessed car a .22-caliber handgun fitted with a homemade silencer and a black bag filled with a green Halloween mask, ammunition, a black knit cap and a tube of crack.

Beauchamp, 34, is the owner of the house at Southwest Seventh Avenue that police have cordoned off and been searching since Thursday for evidence in the slayings of the two children.